The rolling hills west of the Deep Woods were a different kind of wilderness. Gone were the towering, sentient trees and the dense, murmuring canopy. Here, the land was open, sculpted by wind and grazing beasts. Tall, golden grasses rippled like a sea under a vast, cloud-dappled sky. Clusters of hardy, twisted oaks dotted the landscape like solitary sentinels. To Chen Mo's newly sensitive Mana Perception, the energy here was diffuse but vibrant—a broad, sun-washed canvas of gold and earthy brown flows, teeming with the simple, fierce life of insects, rodents, and birds of prey. After the oppressive silence of the dead mountains, it felt like emerging into loud, bright sunlight.
It also felt exposed.
They traveled by day, sticking to low ground and using the occasional copse for cover. Kaelen's leg was healing, but she still moved with a slight limp. Chen Mo's physical wounds had closed, thanks to the elven healers, but he carried a deeper weariness, a spiritual brittleness. The broken Sovereign's Tusk in his pack was a constant, aching absence at his side, a phantom limb.
Their goal was Crossroads, a frontier settlement Kaelen described as a "semi-lawful bottleneck for all things unwanted and necessary." According to her maps and the elves' intelligence, it lay five days' travel to the west-northwest, at the convergence of a muddy trade road from the southern duchies and the dangerous, unofficial trails from the eastern wilds—like the one they were on.
The journey was uneventful in terms of combat, but rich in lessons. Kaelen, true to her word, became his tutor.
"Your mana sight is passive, a flood of data," she said one afternoon as they rested in the shade of a lone oak. She pointed to a hovering hawk, a distant smudge of focused, predatory gold in his vision. "You see the 'what.' You need to learn the 'how' and 'why.' Watch the flow around its wings."
He focused. He saw the energy, but it was just a glow. "It's bright."
"Look at the patterns," she insisted. "See how the mana streamlines over its primary feathers, creating lift? See the subtle vortex behind its tail? It's not just glowing; it's interacting with the physical world through instinctive, micro-channeling. All living things do this to some degree. Mages learn to do it consciously."
She had him practice on the grass, trying to feel the slow, steady pulse of life emanating from the roots, to distinguish it from the sharper, more transient energy of a scurrying beetle. It was frustrating, minute work. The Protocol was no help here; it could analyze the energy signature of the beetle down to its metabolic rate, but couldn't teach him the feel of it.
[Skill Development: Mana Perception (Basic) proficiency increased. 22%. Host is learning qualitative assessment.]
Progress was slow, but tangible.
At night, she drilled him on theory. "The world operates on layered principles. The Physical. The Spiritual. The Arcane. Most beings exist firmly in one, brushing against another. You, currently, are an anomaly: your body is Physical, your spirit is… suppressed or integrated with your void-anchor, and your access to the Arcane is entirely mediated by that anchor. You are not a mage. You are an operator."
She explained the basics of common magical traditions: Elementalists who bargained with or commanded primal forces; Spirit-Weavers who worked with the essences of living and dead things; Enchanters who imbued order and purpose into objects; and the forbidden arts of Necromancy and Blood Magic, which shortcut power through sacrifice and violation.
"The Blight," she concluded, "is an anti-art. It doesn't weave or command. It unravels. It's a corruption that targets the connections between the layers. Your Protocol, in its own sterile way, does something similar but in reverse—it seeks to overwrite existing systems with its own orderly logic."
By the fourth day, the first signs of other people appeared: a burnt-out campfire, the ruts of a cart wheel in a patch of mud, the distant sound of an axe biting into wood. The mana flows began to show human signatures—messier, more complex and turbulent than animal energy, tangled with emotions and intent.
On the afternoon of the fifth day, they crested a final hill and saw Crossroads.
It was less a town and more a scar on the landscape. A palisade of sharpened, uneven logs encircled a haphazard collection of perhaps sixty buildings: rough timber longhouses, sod-roofed huts, and a few more substantial structures of fieldstone around a central muddy square. Outside the walls sprawled a shantytown of tents, lean-tos, and animal pens. Threads of smoke rose from countless fires. The whole place stank of woodsmoke, unwashed humanity, animal dung, and something sharper—fear, ambition, and cheap ale.
The mana vision was overwhelming. A seething, chaotic stew of energy. The simple life-force of hundreds of people created a dull, warm glow over the settlement. But overlaid on that were countless sharper colors: the steely grey of weaponry, the oily rainbow shimmer of low-grade alchemical concoctions, the fleeting sparks of petty charms and wards, and here and there, a few disciplined, brighter cores—actual practitioners of some minor art. It was visual noise of the highest order.
"Welcome to civilization's festering edge," Kaelen said dryly. "Remember the rules. We are travelers from the east, looking to trade furs and oddities for supplies to continue west. You are my mute, scarred bodyguard. Let me do the talking. Your… demeanor and lack of common knowledge will sell the story well enough."
Chen Mo nodded. He pulled the hood of his Elven Wayfarer Cloak up. The grey-green fabric subtly shifted, mimicking the drab colors of the hillside. He looked the part: worn clothes, a visible healing scar on his cheek from a goblin's claw, the empty scabbard at his hip, and a large pack that presumably held their "furs." Kaelen, with her staff and focused, scholarly air, would be the face.
They joined a trickle of traffic on the main path: a farmer with a cart of turnips, a group of rough-looking trappers with pelts, a lone mercenary in battered half-plate. The guards at the open gate were two burly men in mismatched leather armor, leaning on spears. They looked bored but alert, their eyes scanning for obvious trouble or easy bribes.
One guard straightened up as Kaelen approached. "Purpose and toll," he grunted. "Two copper pennies a head to enter. Weapons stay peace-bonded." He gestured to a leather thong he'd tie around the hilt of a sword to make it harder to draw quickly.
"Trade and resupply," Kaelen said, her voice assuming a slightly weary, pragmatic tone. She handed over four dull copper coins. "My man is armed. He's quiet, but he follows orders."
The guard eyed Chen Mo, who kept his head down, his hood shadowing his face. The guard's gaze lingered on the empty scabbard. "What happened to his blade?"
"Broken on a boar's skull," Kaelen said with a shrug. "Haven't had the coin to replace it yet. The tusk paid for the trip, though." She patted her pack.
The guard seemed to buy it. He looped a thong around the hilt of Chen Mo's belt knife—a simple, functional piece he'd taken from a Watcher—and waved them through. "Keep the peace. The Captain's men aren't forgiving."
Inside, the noise and smell intensified. The central square was a churned-up marketplace. Hawkers shouted over each other, peddling everything from rusty nails and spoiled fruit to dubious potions in colored bottles and "guaranteed" monster-repelling amulets. The buildings leaned against each other for support, their upper stories casting the muddy streets into deep shadow even at midday.
Kaelen led them to a stable attached to a two-story inn with a sign showing a chipped painting of a grinning boar. "The Laughing Pig. It's not clean, but it's less likely to slit our throats in our sleep than the alternatives. We need a room, a hot meal, and information."
The common room was dark, smoky, and loud. A dozen tables were occupied by a mix of locals, traders, and adventurers. The air buzzed with conversation, dice games, and the clatter of tankards. Chen Mo's enhanced hearing, combined with the Listener's Bracer, made it a cacophony of overlapping voices and emotions—greed, anger, desperation, fleeting joy. He focused on filtering it out, on being the silent, watchful guard.
Kaelen secured a tiny room under the eaves with two narrow cots for a silver penny. They left their packs—with the broken Tusk carefully wrapped inside Chen Mo's—locked in the room with a simple ward-charm Kaelen placed on the door, a twisting symbol that glowed faintly in his mana sight.
Downstairs, they took a corner table. Kaelen ordered stew and ale. Chen Mo sat with his back to the wall, observing. His eyes, aided by Keen Eye, picked out details: the calloused hands of a merchant, the subtle, nervous twitch of a man who was likely a deserter, the too-clean weapons of a pair who were either very successful or very new to the frontier.
The information they needed came in fragments, overheard or carefully teased out by Kaelen in conversation with the wary innkeeper.
The road west was "troubled." Bandit activity was up, likely deserters from the recent, inconclusive skirmishes between the southern duchies.
The Shattered Wastes were considered a death sentence. "Only fools, Seekers, and the damned go there," the innkeeper muttered, glancing at Kaelen's staff.
There was talk of "witch-burning" to the south. The Blackstone Watchers were gaining influence, petitioning local lords for authority to "cleanse" the frontier of magical taint. Their rhetoric was growing more militant.
And a more specific, interesting rumor: a caravan had arrived two days prior from the south-west. Its master was reportedly seeking guards for a journey into the "Broken Hills," a region that bordered the Shattered Wastes. The pay was good, but no one had taken the job yet. The caravan was camped outside the southern gate.
"A caravan heading in our general direction," Kaelen mused over her stew. "It could provide cover, supplies, and intelligence. And if they're desperate for guards, they'll ask fewer questions."
"Or it's a trap," Chen Mo said quietly, his first words since entering the town.
"Everything here is a potential trap. The question is whether the potential reward outweighs the risk. We need to meet this caravan master."
After the meal, they ventured back into the muddy streets. Kaelen needed to purchase specific supplies: parchment, ink, certain herbs for her poultices, and most importantly, a credible weapon for Chen Mo. They couldn't have a bodyguard with an empty scabbard for long without raising suspicions.
They found a grim-faced blacksmith in a soot-stained shack. His wares were functional and ugly: nails, hinges, and a rack of simple weapons. Chen Mo's eyes passed over notched swords and poorly balanced axes. Then he saw it, leaning in a corner: a hand-and-a-half sword, also called a bastard sword. It was plain, with a leather-wrapped grip and a simple crossguard, its blade showing faint marks of use and sharpening. But in his mana sight, it had a faint, steady gleam. Not magical, but well-made. The steel had been folded and tempered by a competent hand; it had a history of reliability. It held a silent, martial integrity.
"That one," Chen Mo said, pointing, his voice a gravelly whisper befitting his role.
The smith looked surprised he'd spoken, then grunted. "Three silver. It's seen use, but it's true. No fancywork."
Kaelen haggled him down to two silver and five copper. Chen Mo belted on the scabbard. The weight was different, the balance unfamiliar after the curved, intuitive heft of the Tusk. It felt like a crude tool, a placeholder. But it was better than nothing.
As they left the smithy, the Listener's Bracer on Chen Mo's wrist gave a faint, cool pulse. It wasn't a sound, but a direction, a tug of attention. He looked down a narrow, refuse-choked alley between a tannery and a boarded-up building. His mana sight, focusing as Kaelen had taught him, picked up a subtle, wrongness—a geometric, repeating shadow that didn't match the chaotic grime around it. A pattern.
He stopped. "Wait."
Kaelen followed his gaze. "What is it?"
"There's… a shape. Man-made. Not right for here." He moved into the alley, ignoring the stench. Against the back wall of the tannery, half-hidden by a broken barrel, was a section of wall that was too smooth. On it, someone had drawn a symbol not with paint, but with a substance that absorbed light and mana. It was a circle intersected by three jagged lines, like a fractured iris. It hummed with a faint, dissonant energy that made his teeth ache.
Kaelen sucked in a breath. "A Void-cult sigil. A marker. But this isn't their territory. They operate in the deep cities, in places of despair and forgotten lore. What are they doing in a frontier dung-heap like Crossroads?"
[Unknown Symbol Detected. Pattern matches archaic 'Gateway' or 'Beacon' motifs associated with dimensional instability.]
[Energy Signature: Corrupted Void/Order hybrid. Similarities to secondary emissions from 'Reality Tear'.]
The Protocol's analysis was chilling. This wasn't just graffiti. It was a signpost, or a ritual anchor, left by someone who understood the void on a level beyond mere madness.
"Could it be linked to the caravan?" Chen Mo whispered. "Looking for guards to go into the Broken Hills… near the Wastes…"
Kaelen's face was grim. "Or the caravan is the target. Either way, we need to see this caravan master. Now. This changes the calculus."
They hurried towards the southern gate, the new sword heavy at Chen Mo's side, the discovery of the sigil turning the simple need for travel cover into something far more sinister. The game in Crossroads wasn't just about survival or supplies. A new player had entered the field, one that understood the void not as a mindless hunger, but as a tool. And they were leaving their calling card in the shadows.